Polysaccharides fractionated from enzyme digests of Korean red ginseng water extracts enhance the immunostimulatory activity

Hoon Kim, Hyo Won Kim, Kwang Won Yu, Hyung Joo Suh

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

32 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Polysaccharide with the enhanced immunostimulatory activities including intestinal immune system modulation was fractionated from Korean red ginseng (KRG) and its characteristics were investigated in the present experiment. When the water extracts were digested with α–amylase and amyloglucosidase and precipitated by ethanol to enhance immunostimulatory activity, enzyme digested-crude polysaccharides enhanced the macrophage and intestinal immune system via Peyer's patches compared to non-enzymatic crude polysaccharides. Starch-like polysaccharide also potently decreased in enzyme digested-crude polysaccharides. Especially, crude polysaccharide (RG-CW-EZ-CP) from the digest of cold water extracts showed significantly the most active immunostimulatory activities. By precipitation using ethanol concentrations (distilled water:ethanol = 1:4 and 1:8), two immunostimulatory polysaccharides (RG-CW-EZ-CP-4 and RG-CW-EZ-CP-8) were further fractionated from RG-CW-EZ-CP. In chemical analysis, RG-CW-EZ-CP-4 and RG-CW-EZ-CP-8 seems to be a pectic-like acidic polysaccharide and arabinose-rich polysaccharide, and heat treatment of polysaccharides (RG-CW-EZ-CP-4 and RG-CW-EZ-CP-8) did not significantly affect the intestinal immune system-modulating activity. RG-CW-EZ-CP-8 also significantly upregulated the phosphorylation of three major mitogen-activated protein kinases (MAPKs), including c-Jun N-terminal kinase, extracellular signal-regulated kinase, and p38. Thus, enzymatic digestion of KRG cold water extracts played a very important role in the isolation of the enhanced immunostimulatory polysaccharides from KRG.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)913-920
Number of pages8
JournalInternational Journal of Biological Macromolecules
Volume121
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2019 Jan

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
This study was supported by grant from both Korean Society of Ginseng and Korean Ginseng Corporation in 2016.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 Elsevier B.V.

Keywords

  • Intestinal immune system modulation
  • Korean red ginseng
  • Polysaccharide

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Structural Biology
  • Biochemistry
  • Molecular Biology
  • Economics and Econometrics
  • General Energy

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